Hunting & Gathering (2007)

Such a frustrating disappointment

Simply Perfect

One of my all time favorites.

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

I liked the film. Though it differs from the novel by Anna Gavalda. I imagined a bit another Franck, but Guillaume Canet is so charming, and I must admit that he perfectly fits his part. Audrey Tautou isn't the best Camille... but I'm used to her being the "prima ballerina" of the French cinema... I reckon that are Philibert (Laurent Stocker) and Franck (Guillaume Canet) who make the whole film worth watching. And of course I must admit Tautou's good acting. All the actors beautified the film. It's no use retelling the plot. It's not a detective story with millions of turns up. This film speaks about life. And you know, read the book first. That's my advice. The film isn't as good as its original. But nothing's perfect! And if you want to form your own opinion (not the director's one) about Camille, Franck, Philibert, Paulette...... both read and watch.

It begins in a quite French comedy way. It's the cleaning girl who lives under the roof, the extremely nerdy young Parisian aristocrat and the young soft macho chef aspirant. They come together and it could have been both entertaining and thought inspiring.But it turns into feel-good in a manner which is worse than most Hollywood remakes. Audrey Tautou doesn't have that variation in her acting that you now can demand. Or does the take the wrong parts? Guillaume Canet as the young chef is better.But the story is too simple, looking at the big market in the West too much. You don't feel as good from this as was intended.

Claude Berri is a director who often seems on the verge of becoming a name outside France but somehow doesn't quite make it. His films are interesting - One Leaves, The Other Stays - to excellent - Lucie Aubrac with very little dross. Now he's taken a popular French novel and cast Audrey Tautou in a lead for which she's almost but not quite suited. She plays a gifted anorexic artist who has elected to work as a cleaner to her mother's disappointment. She becomes friendly with an eccentric aristocrat, Laurent Stocker, who lives in an immense apartment which he shares more or less unaccountably with a surly chef, Guillaume Canet. When he realizes that Camille (Tautou) is ill Philbert (Stocker) takes her to live in his apartment and nurses her back to health, this allows for the Benedict and Beatrice element between Tautou and womanizer Canet who also has an elderly grandmother in hospital. Against the odds the three form a bond and bring the grandmother into the menage when she leaves hospital and that's about it. Stocker, who generates all of the action tends to become low man on his own totem pole so that his own development as an actor who finds his own romance takes something of a back seat to Tautou and Canet. Never less than interesting it doesn't quite make it to the next level.

"Ensemble, c'est tout" (the title translates to "Together, That's All," but it looks like it will be released in English-speaking countries as "Hunting and Gathering") is, at heart, a romantic wish-fulfillment fable, and a particularly French example of the genre. If you're a depressed, anorexic girl who lives in a tiny room and works as a cleaning lady despite your artistic talents, what could be better than having your blueblooded neighbor invite you to stay in his luxe, antique-stuffed Parisian apartment? By the end of your time there, you and your new friends will form a makeshift family, and you'll even find love with a guy who rides a motorcycle and is a talented chef. Don't worry that you hated him at first sight. It's a romantic fable; these things happen.At least, they happen that way for Camille (Audrey Tautou), the heroine of "Ensemble, c'est tout." Her host in that fabulous apartment is Philibert (Laurent Stocker), a young, eccentric, and socially awkward scion of an aristocratic family. Philibert shares his apartment with Franck (Guillaume Canet) the motorcycle-chef; and eventually Franck's ailing grandmother Paulette (Françoise Bertin) moves in as well.From there, things proceed mostly how you'd expect, with the requisite mixture of comedy and drama. The scenes between Franck and Paulette are the least original; the other plot lines at least have a few amusing incidents to liven them up. And the movie is so concerned with the romance between Camille and Franck that Philibert--who also finds love during the course of the story--gets short shrift. We never see him interact with his girlfriend, which severely limits his character arc. Also, in an American movie, a character who looks and acts like Philibert (shy, bookish, wearing velvet suits and bow ties) would almost certainly be gay, so it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that he isn't. This, however, is the only surprise that "Ensemble, c'est tout" has in store.